Allah & His Messenger in Our Lives

Allah & His Messenger in Our Lives

Opening Praise and Testimony

Alhamdulillah wa salat wa salamu ala rasulillah, ala sayyidina Muhammad wa ala aalihi wa sahbihi wa salam, tasliman. Alhamdulillah, we praise Him, we ask for His help and we ask for His forgiveness. We seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls and from the evil of our actions. Whom Allah guides, no one is misguided, and whom He misguides, no one is guided. Wa salawatu wa salamu ala afdari khalaqillah ala sayyidina rasulillah wa ala aalihi wa salam.

Inna Allaha subhanahu wa ta'ala qad amara fi kitabihi al-karim:

"O you who believe, fear Allah as He should be feared, and die not except as Muslims."

"O mankind, fear your Lord who created you from one soul and created from it its mate and dispersed from both of them many men and women. And fear Allah through whom you ask one another, and the wombs. Indeed Allah is ever, over you, an Observer."

The Blessed Month of Rabi' al-Awwal

Alhamdulillah, we praise Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and thank Him for allowing us to reach this day. This blessed day, Jumu'ah, the day of the Muslims, yawmul jumu'ah. This month, alhamdulillah, is called Rabi' al-Awwal, which means in Arabic, the first spring. And it is the month that our Prophet ﷺ was born in.

And it's a blessed month for that reason. The Prophet ﷺ was asked in Sahih Muslim about fasting on the day of Monday. And he said (فِيهِ وُلِدْتُ - fīhi wulidtu) "In it I was born." In other words, I was born on that day, so it's a good day to fast, because of the blessing of his birthday. And one of the traditions of the Muslims was during this month, after about the 7th century, they began to revive the enumeration of his qualities and his blessed personality.

Teaching Love of the Prophet ﷺ

Now, I would just like to take this opportunity on this day, visiting your community, to remind you of a few things. One of them is that the Prophet ﷺ said in a hadith that is from Sayyidina Ali رضي الله عنه: (عَلِّمُوا أَوْلَادَكُمْ ثَلَاثَ خِصَالٍ : حُبَّ نَبِيِّكُمْ، وَحُبَّ أَهْلِ بَيْتِهِ، وَتِلَاوَةَ الْقُرْآنِ - ‘allimū awlādakum thalātha khiṣālin: ḥubba nabīyyikum, wa ḥubba ahli baytihi, wa tilāwata al-qur’ān) "Teach your children three qualities: Love of your Prophet, and love of his family, and the recitation of the Qur'an." Because those who carry the Qur'an, they are on these terraces of light on the day of judgment.

So, the Prophet ﷺ told us to teach our children to love the Prophet ﷺ. Inculcating love of the Prophet ﷺ is one of the most important things in Islam, particularly for non-Arab people, more than Arab people, for a major reason.

How Islam Spread Among Arabs vs Non-Arabs

And that is that, historically, Islam spread amongst the Arabs with the Qur'an. The mu'jiza of the Qur'an was something that the early Arabs, when they heard it, after a period of time, even though the initial response against it was based on their jahiliyyah, as the Arabic of the Qur'an began to permeate their hearts, more and more of them became certain.

Uthman ibn Madh'un, for instance, said that the Prophet ﷺ was so constant in his asking me to become a Muslim. Ilhah is to just be consistent, unrelenting. And he said that when he heard the verse : (إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَأْمُرُ بِالْعَدْلِ وَالْإِحْسَانِ - ʾinna-llāha yaʾmuru bi-l-ʿadli wa-l-ʾiḥsān) (Quran 16:90) "That Allah commands justice, and excellence, and charity." And when he heard those verses, the iman entered his heart.

Now this is a man who lived with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. And despite that, he himself said that it was the Arabic of the Qur'an that overwhelmed him. Now when the Muslims moved into the non-Arab lands, the thing that convinced the non-Arabs more than anything else, was the character of the people that they were seeing.

The Character of the Prophet ﷺ

And the character of those people was the character of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. Because those people embodied the akhlaq of the Messenger. His character. (وَإِنَّكَ لَعَلَى خُلُقٍ عَظِيمٍ - wa ʾinnaka laʿalā khuluqin ʿaẓīm) (Quran 68:4) "You are upon a vast character."

The Prophet ﷺ said, (إِنَّمَا بُعِثْتُ لِأُتَمِّمَ مَكَارِمَ الْأَخْلَاقِ - ʾinnamā buʿithtu liʾutamima makārima al-ʾakhlaq) "I was only sent to complete noble character." And so those things that he embodied himself, and the Prophet ﷺ never did anything or told anybody to do anything, except that he himself was the first to apply it in his own life. And this is why his teaching had such an extraordinary impact.

Now as it moved into the non-Arab countries, they did not become Muslim through the Qur'an, because they couldn't understand the Qur'an. I mean we talk about mu'jizat al-Qur'an, the miracle of the Qur'an. Most Arabs don't know the miracle of Qur'an. The modern Arabs don't know because they haven't studied balagha. They haven't studied rhetoric or studied the daqa'iq al-Qur'an. It sounds amazing to people, even to non-Arabs. They hear the Qur'an and they can recognize that something is very unique about it. But to really understand i'jaz al-Qur'an, the miracle of Qur'an, it takes many years of serious study.

The Pinnacle of Arabic Language

Because people forget that the Arabs at the time of the Qur'an had reached the pinnacle of language. The Arabs had reached their pinnacle. Every people have a period where the language is the highest. In Greek, it was at the time of Homer, what they call Attic Greek. It's the highest level of Greek that the Greek people have ever had.

Nobody's ever been able to replicate the eloquence of that period. During the English language, it was the Elizabethan period. Nobody's ever been able to reach the level of the language of the great playwrights and poets of the late 16th and early 17th century. It's a fact of the English language and it's admitted by any English professor.

Now the same is true for the Arabic. At the time of the 7th century, the Arabs had reached their pinnacle of language. And that is why the great poets of the Arabian Peninsula, they were all, either they had just died at the time the Prophet ﷺ arrived, or a few of them were still alive. Now when they came, when the Prophet ﷺ brought the Qur'an, they were unable to imitate the Qur'an.

And the other Arabs who were eloquent by their nature, they could say poems offhand, they could get up and give an extemporaneous talk with very great eloquence and what they call a type of rhyming prose. They could do all these things, but when the Qur'an came, they didn't know what to make of it. It wasn't poetry, it wasn't prose, it didn't fit into any of the categories of language that they were aware of.

The Linguistic Miracle of the Qur'an

And yet they recognized in it a phenomenon that they hadn't seen. Because one of the secrets of the Qur'an is that in language, if you take any language and you write something in it, a master of rhetoric could come and improve on it. But it gets to a certain point where you can't improve on it. You can't improve on the language. So if you look at, for instance, if you look at the statement in English, "to be or not to be, that is the question." You can't find a more eloquent way of making that statement, which is why it's what it is. If you read the soliloquies of Shakespeare, you can't improve on them. If you tried, you're best. But there are lines in Shakespeare that can be improved on. They're considered weak lines.

Every poet in Jahiliyyah had what they called abyat rakika, like weak lines. Every poet, Imr al-Qais, Labid, Zuhair, all of them have weak lines that can be improved on. And this is what the great rhetoricians, when they would look and analyze the poetry, you get nuqqad al-shi'r. These are the critics of poetry. And they would say this is a weak line. And then they would explain why it's a weak line. Because he's using words that are not fasih. It could be more balig, it could have more eloquence. Had he said it like this.

But Abu Bakr al-Baqillani went through the entire Qur'an and showed how nothing in the Qur'an can be improved upon in its language. So if you take a verse like, (اللَّهُ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا هُوَ الْحَيُّ الْقَيُّومُ - Allāhu lā ʾilāha ʾillā hūwa-l-ḥayyu-l-qayyūm) (Quran 2:255) "Allah, there is no deity except Him, the Ever-Living, the Sustainer." And you look at that, when talking about the attributes and qualities of Allah, you cannot improve on a verse like that.

If you take a verse of blame or censure, like, (تَبَّتْ يَدَا أَبِي لَهَبٍ وَتَبَّ - tabbati yadā ʾabī lahabin wa tabb) (Quran 111:1) "May the hands of Abu Lahab be ruined, and ruined is he." You can't improve on it. (تَبَّتْ يَدَا أَبِي لَهَبٍ وَتَبَّ - tabbati yadā ʾabī lahabin wa tabb) You can't say that in a better way in the Arabic language. To say what is meant to be said in that, you can't improve on it.

(قُطُوفُهَا دَانِيَةٌ - quṭūfuhā dāniyah) (Quran 69:23) "Its fruits hanging low." You can't improve on it. (لَا يَسْخَرْ قَوْمٌ مِّن قَوْمٍ عَسَى أَن يَكُونُوا خَيْرًا مِّنْهُمْ - lā yaskhar qawmun min qawmin ʿasā ʾan yakūnū khayran minhum) (Quran 49:11) "Let not a people ridicule another people; perhaps they may be better than them." You can't improve on that. So what he showed is that the i'jaz of the Qur'an is that the language reached its pinnacle. And to bring an entire book like this is not in the capacity of a human being. To bring an entire book.

The Challenge of the Qur'an

Now there's a khilaf amongst the ulema about i'jaz. Is the i'jaz of Qur'an an i'jaz that is impossible because Allah will not allow it? Or is it linguistically simply impossible for anyone to replicate it? That the ulema debate on. And some of them say the fact that none of them could even bring one surah. Three verses. They couldn't do it. (Quran 108:1) (إِنَّا أَعْطَيْنَاكَ الْكَوْثَرَ - ʾinnā ʾaʿṭaynāka-l-kawthar) Or (Quran 112:1) (قُلْ هُوَ اللَّهُ أَحَدٌ - qul huwa-llāhu ʾaḥad)

So if you look at the Musaylima al-Kadhdhab. He was a liar. He claimed he was a prophet. But when he attempted to bring a Qur'an it was silly. He couldn't do it. (الْخَابِزَةُ خُبْرًا وَاللَّاقِمَةُ لُقْمَا وَالثَّارِدَةُ ثَرْدًا - al-khābizatu khubran wa-l-lāqimatu luqman wa-th-thāridatu thardan) I mean it's like silly. (الْفِيلُ مَا الْفِيلُ وَمَا أَدْرَاكَ مَا الْفِيلُ لَهُ ذَنَبٌ وَخُرْطُومٌ طَوِيلٌ - al-fīlu mā-l-fīlu wa mā ʾadrāka mā-l-fīlu lahu dhanabun wa khurṭūmun ṭawīl) He couldn't do it. Even though he was an extremely eloquent person.

And when Abu Bakr heard what Musaylima said he said to them (أَتَّبَعْتُمُوهُ عَلَى هَذَا - ʾattabaʿtūhu ʿalā hādhā) "Did you follow him based on these silly things?" Do you see? So that's a khilaf والله أعلم. Some ulema are inclined towards that. It's actually linguistic. But Allah knows best.

Spreading Islam to Non-Arabs

So the point is that the Arabs when the Qur'an came they knew it was mu'jiz. But when they went to the 'ajam, what did they have to bring them? If you recite Qur'an, if you go out here and say Qur'an is mu'jiza, and you tell an American Qur'an is mu'jiza. First of all, what's mu'jiza? It means miracle. Oh, it's a miracle. How is it a miracle? The language is amazing. Like what? Well, like that book, no doubt in it. And then he says, what do you mean? That book, no doubt in it. Guidance for the people of Taqwa, piety. And he says, well, what's a miracle about that? (الم ذَلِكَ الْكِتَابُ لَا رَيْبَ فِيهِ هُدًى لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ - ʾalif-lām-mīm ḏālika-l-kitābu lā rayba fīhi hudan li-l-muttaqīn) (Quran 2:1-2)

(الرَّحْمَنُ عَلَّمَ الْقُرْآنَ - ar-raḥmānu ‘allama-l-qurʾān) (عَلَّمَهُ الْبَيَانَ الشَّمْسُ وَالْقَمَرُ بِحُسْبَانٍ - ‘allamahu-l-bayān ash-shamsu wa-l-qamaru bi-ḥusbān)

If you translate it into English, I met a man. He said he'd read the Qur'an. And I said, what did you think? He said to me it was confusing. And I said to him, you didn't read it, because you can't translate it. He said, what do you mean you can't translate it? And I recited to him the beginning of Surat Ar-Rahman: (الرَّحْمَنُ - ar-raḥmān) (عَلَّمَ الْقُرْآنَ - ‘allama-l-qurʾān) (خَلَقَ الْإِنسَانَ - khalaqa-l-ʾinsān) (Quran 55:1-5) And when I recited it, and I recited it slowly with Tajweed, and he said, I understand. He could just hear in the sounds that how do you translate those sounds? How do you translate jinas? How do you translate tibaq? Those qualities in Arabic are very difficult to transfer into another language. You would need a master to even approximate the meaning. Somebody like Shakespeare who would have to be a master in Arabic and a master of English before they could even come close to conveying the eloquence of the Arabic.

The Character That Convinced Non-Arabs